Indian planter? Does not the practice we are reprobating, level the child of the free-born citizen with the offspring of the slave-born African ?

In all cases of chimney-sweeping ap prenticeship, boys are articled-sentenced to the horrid vocation at a tender age; for it is only at a tender age that the dimensions of their bodies will admit of their being generally useful to their masters; it is only while their frames are diminutive enough to be forced up narrow flues, that they can perform the task which cramps and cripples them for life. It is, therefore, at that early stage of their existence that period when they are much too young to judge for themselves, to be sensible of the cruel hardships to which they are about to be subjected—that they are bound to a tyrant, whose breast is callous to every appeal of infant suffering; as well because in his youth, he has undergone similar inflictions, as because he was never taught the common sentiments of humanity. He has himself become maimed in his limbs, deformed in his body, and been rendered a repulsive object; and sees no injustice in other children being compelled to endure that, which he was obliged to undergo in his own boyhood.

But is his corporeal suffering, great as we know it to be, the only grievance of which the sacrificed infant has to complain? Does that constitute his only title to our pity? With the injuries inflicted on his body, does he not suffer a debasement of mind? Is he not mentally brutified, as well as personally deformed? Is he not, by the forbidding nature of his occupation by the continual dirt and filth in which he is enveloped, utterly excluded from every thing like decent society? Is not the table from which he eats, either the ground on which he sits, or a bare uncleanly board? Does he not, by day, relax his labours on a cinder-heap, and at night repose in a cellar, on soot-bags? Are not all his habits of life, as well as his consequent ignorance and gross vulgarity, inhuman, and calculated to place him far below the generality of his fellow-creatures? What is this but a total sacrifice of the individual, as far as his mind is concerned? What is it short of his annihilation, as an intellectual being? How difficult then, to conceive on what ground the house of lords could reject a bill passed by the commons, for the relief we may say, of human nature? for subjecting the offspring of man to evils so humiliating, so degrading, so barbarously oppressive.

Happily, the committee of the "Society for superseding Climbing Boys," no way dismayed by a disappointment which

they were far from expecting, have not relaxed in their endeavours to relieve their species from this severe and degrading slavery; but have unremittingly exerted themselves to promote the universal ap plication of machinery. As the most prompt and direct method for suppressing the abominable practice of sending infants up chimnies, they have been urgent in recommending the use of the Scandi scope, invented by Mr. Smart; and so much do we feel for the unhappy urchins for whose relief it is intended, that we sincerely hope this, or some other ade. quate contrivance, will ere long be generally adopted. A stronger call upon humanity cannot, in our judgment, be made, than that of the misery to which these helpless infantile sufferers are fated, by the horrid nature of their employments and the too general cruelty of their mas ters; and both for their individual sake, and the honour of the community, we hope and trust, that the laudable object will, ere long, be patronised and promoted by the legislature, and the whole British public.

QUERY.

"WHEN was the English word City first used, and how was it applied?-was it not originally applied to those towns which had bishoprics, and to those towns only ?”

Blackstone states, that "a city is a town which either is, or hath been, the see of a bishop." Ergo, without bishops there were no cities. But it is argued that the city of Westminster has no bishop, and never had this point has, however, been disputed,

Bishops were in existence centuries before the word city, or citie, was invented, and other words were in use, to express the principal towns in the kingdom, which are now known by the name of cities. I am of opinion that whenever the word was adopted, it was applied to those places only which had bishops belonging to them, although it has since obtained a more extensive meaning; and has been indiscriminately used in heathen, as well as christian, countries.

William the conqueror, in a charter granted by him to the city of London, calls the worthy citizens," The people, his servants :" in short I believe the words city and citizens were not then in existence, but were afterwards adopted, probably in the same reign. When there was a convocation of the bishops and abbots of the country, and a law was

passed that no ecclesiastic under the rank of a bishop or abbot should sit in council or parliament, and likewise, that no bishop should from that time be appointed to villages or small towns, (no mention is then made of the word city!): upon this occasion, several bishops were removed from small inconsiderable places, to places of consideration and note. I think it is probable, that the term city or citie was first used about this time, and applied only to those places to which bishops were appointed by way of distinction

and eminence.

H.P.C.

[We agree with H. P. C. that the term city was introduced about the period of the conquest, but think the appellation was not limited to episcopal towns. It appears to have been derived from civitas, and applied to all towns of eminence, signifying that they were places subject to civil government and municipal regulation. Long after the conquest, city is used synonymously with burgh; as in the charter of Leicester it is called both civitas and burgus, which shows clearly that Blackstone is mistaken in limiting the term to towns which are or have been the sees of bishops. But Mr. Wooddeson, the Vinerian professor, has adduced on this point a decisive authority. It is that of Ingulphus, who relates that, at the great council assembled in 1072, to settle the claims of two archbishops, it was decreed that bishops' sees should be transferred from towns to cities.-H. P. C. is certainly in error in thinking Westminster never had a bishop; it had one, and only one, created by Henry VIII. at the dissolution of the religious houses. ED.]

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for masters and scholars was no sooner suggested, than the musical world began to be inundated with books of instruction. Among the earliest of those were Faulkener's "Thorough-bass," Arnold's and Hook's "Guides," and Kollman's and Mr. P. King's "Theoretical Works." Later times have so greatly increased the publications of this kind, that almost every music-shop has its Piano-forte Instructor, and every teacher his own theoretical assistant.

However, notwithstanding these facts, Mr. Sheppard, it seems, thought that his predecessors in the vineyard of tuition, had left room for new labours; and he was not altogether wrong: for though there be some truth in the assertion of an ingenious writer, that the advances of a learner depend more upon his own industry, and the abilities of his master, than on the method in which he is taught, yet we are of opinion that the latter is a point of considerable importance. So sure as there are various ways of doing every thing,' there is a best way; and to that best way, Mr. S. has made a near approach. His system is easy, because it is simple, and very encouraging, because it is remarkably gradual and progressive. He carefully carries his reader from grade to grade, up his slowly ascending scale, and stops, or touches, at every point of importance. The information he conveys is so complete and satisfactory in the substance, and so luminous by its arrangement, that we think the musical public much obliged to the author for the ingenuity and pains he has bestowed on a work, which, if it increases the previous load of instruction books, will also augment the speed of the pupil.

HETTON COLLIERY RAIL ROAD, DURHAM.

THIS rail road is used merely for the conveyance of coals from the Hetton Colliery to the place of embarkation, on the river Wear. As it is a private railway, constructed without an Act of Parliament, there was little choice of direction, and the engineer was under the necessity of adopting lines and planes by no means advantageous. The height of the hill up which the rail road ascends, is six hundred feet, and the whole length of the rail road seven miles. The waggons are drawn from the pit to the foot of the hill by a locomotive engine, and up the hill by the two fixed engines on the summits of the planes. The motion up these planes is comparatively slow, as the opposing

acclivity is considerable. On the declivity of the hill are four inclined planes, down which the loaded waggons descend by their own weight, and also draw up the same number of empty ones. The rails are so arranged, that the two trains of waggons pass each other at the middle of the inclined planes, at which part only there are four rails, or a double road; the upper half has three rails, the lower only two. The space between the bottom of one plane and the top of another, is just so long, that the waggons can travel over it, by means of the velocity they have acquired in descending. When a sufficient number of waggons have arrived at the bottom of the lowest of these planes, they are attached to the locomotive engine, which conveys them over a space of about three miles. This space has a slight descent towards the river, nearly equalizing the work of the engine, in drawing the loaded waggons in one direction, and returning with the empty ones. In proceeding towards the river, another short, self-acting, inclined plane occurs, at the top of which the locomotive engine stops, and exchanges the loaded waggons for empty ones returning towards the colliery. And over the short distance at the bottom of this last inclined plane, the waggons are pushed singly by one man, to the place at which the coals are delivered into the ships.

The rails laid on the road are of cast iron. The wheels of the locomotive engine have flat rims, with a flanch or projection along the inner side of the circumference, to retain them on the rail road. They act upon the rail, and produce the progressive motion without the intervention of teeth or ratchet work, merely by means of the adhesion to the rail, which the weight of the engine creates. About sixty tons is the usual load; and the rate between four and five miles per hour. The time occupied by a coal waggon in its journey from the coal pit to the river seldom exceeds an hour, from the great velocity with which they descend the hill. But no very correct estimate of the effect of the locomotive engines can be derived from the work done on this rail road, as it is not constructed on the best principles, owing to the reasons already assigned.

LOVE.

"La science est folle parole,
Ne suivons que d'amour l'école."

In the sunny climes of Greece and Rome, love was a much more import

ant affair, than with us cold-hearted mortals of the north. To many, however, who would judge merely from their domestic history, this seems little short of an anomaly; for in those patriarchal times, the gentle sex were kept in different trim than with us, and were seldom permitted to aspire to higher things, than the making of puddings or baby linen (if such things then were.) There were then no boarding-schools, routs, parks, or theatres, where youthful eyes might throw their witchery over silly swains; and moreover, many a boarding-school Miss will turn up her eyes with astonishment, when we inform her, that their courtships and marriages bear, in general, a much greater similarity to our dealings in indigo and cotton, than our modern traffickings in cupids, flames, and darts. Indeed, if some sturdy old Greek or Roman were at this moment to rise from behind the columns of Athens, or the capitol, and survey our youthful dames-not Penelope-like, at their web and spinning wheels, but gadding about from the bazaar to the parkfrom the park to the theatre-from the theatre to the rout, and from the rout to bed-he would hold up his hands in horror and astonishment, and point to the slaves and seraglios in Egypt, as considering them to afford more perfect examples of conjugal duties and domestic economy. These facts being premised, and the case stated, as a lawyer would say, the natural inference to be drawn in the absence of all information to the contrary is, that from our tender dealings with the tender sex, we are much more susceptible of the tender passion, than the Greeks and Romans were, who kept the dear little things in a state little short of domestic bondage. History, however, rises up to exclaim that it is not so, and to tell us, that they knew more of love matters, and exhibit more examples of intense and unalterable passion, than all Europe put together; and grieve we to say, that to silence this comparison, we are not aware of any young lady having made, in our times, a nearer approach to the feat of Helen, than a jump out of the parlour window, or a trip to Gretna Green, or that any modern Pyramus and Thisbe have rivalled their famous prototypes of old, farther than by tumbling into the Paddington Canal, or experimenting on the taste of "a penn'orth of vite arsenic;" and as for any modern Sappho, we are concerned to state, that all our researches in this respect have been in vain. But what places our gothic indifference on this subject in the strongest light, in comparison with the knowledge and refinement of the ancients, is, our deplorable ignorance of the science of love, and the

various means which the ancients employed to melt the heart of an obdurate fair one to tenderness; or to root out of their own bosoms, some hopeless or unreturned passion. We question much whether any spark of the present degenerate age knows any better way of settling these affairs, than by shooting himself through the head; and we therefore doubt not, but that we shall secure the applause of a grateful posterity, by unfolding the whole arcana of the Materia Medica of love at a glance, so that, in future emergencies of this sort, all young ladies and gentlemen shall have only to employ an apothecary or herbalist, instead of the old-fashioned artillery of cupids, sighs, and billet-doux.

In the Greek and Roman times, when a young fellow conceived a passion for a certain fair one, his mode of proceeding was as different from ours, as ours is from that of a North American Indian and his squaw; billet doux and all their train of cupids, hearts, flames, darts, &c. were utterly unknown; and as for ogling in the theatre or the park, this was impossible. If the enamoured Corydon was a thickheaded rustic, he generally made a discovery of his flame by writing the name of his beloved Amaryllis on trees, walls, doors, &c. (witness en passant Messieurs Warren and Hunt.) But if the inamorato was wealthy and of a sentimental turn, he proceeded to work more tastefully. He began by decking the door of his dulcinea with flowers and garlands, and made libations of wine before her house, sprinkling the posts with the same liquor. This is a sad compliment, of which the beauty and force is not felt, till we recollect that this was the manner in which they performed their adorations to their deities, and which therefore raised the object of it to the rank of a goddess. Lovers are in general quicksighted enough to read, in a movement or a glance, the thoughts of their beloved; but the most certain proof which the fair one could give of a reciprocal flame, was to untie the garlands of her lover, and to compose new ones to present to him. Should all his efforts however prove fruitless, and be repaid by the haughty fair only with scorn and contempt, then recourse was had to enchantresses, of whom the Thessalians enjoyed the highest reputation. The means which were then adopted to reduce the unrelenting heart under the dominion of Venus, and to dispose it to mutual and tender passion, were most commonly philtres and love potions, the operation of which was violent and dangerous, and often deprived such as drank of them of reason itself.

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as may be readily guessed, a subject more of imagination than reality, it is not surprising that, in the selection of the ingredients which composed them, we discover few traces of any laborious research or even delicacy of choice. Had it been a quackery of the present day, lavender water, otto of roses, or some other ladylike article, would no doubt have been employed to secure it a place on the boudoirs of the fair; but the poor Greeks knew as little of these delicacies, as they did of steam-engines or joint stock companies, and our catalogue of their love draughts, we are much afraid, will shock the ears, or, it may be, turn the stomach, of many a delicate petit maître, seeing that the ingredients of the witches' cauldron in Macbeth are nothing to them. Some of the most remarkable of them were these. The hippomanes, the jynx, insects bred from putrefaction, the fish remora, the lizard, the hairs on the tip of a wolf's tail, the bones on the left side of a toad eaten with ants, the blood of doves, bones of snakes, feathers of screech owls, twisted cords of wool in which a person had hanged himself, rags, torches, reliques, a nest of swallows buried and famished in the earth, bones snatched from hungry dogs, the marrow of a boy famished in the midst of plenty, dried human liver, and (mirabile dictu) the brains of a calf. To these may be added most plants growing out of putrid substances, and which, indeed, in ordinary and less desperate cases, were usually resorted to. Such were the ingredients which entered into the composition of that infernal draught a love potion! They are of so ridiculous, and some of them of so horrid a nature, as to point with certainty to the source from whence they came, and to show us that the Thessalian hags knew more of the art of working on the credulity and superstitions of mankind, than of the practice of the Materia Medica.

But besides the philtres various other arts were used to excite love, in which the external application of certain substances was supposed to have a magical influence on the persons against whom they levelled their skill. A hyæna's udder, worn under the left arm, was thought by these rakes of antiquity to draw the affections of any woman they cast their eyes upon. A certain species of olives called lupa, and barley bran or sometimes flour, made up into paste and thrown into the fire, was supposed to excite the flame of love. Burning laurel and melting wax were supposed to have the like effect. When they wanted to harden one heart and soften another,

moulded figures of elay 'and wax were exposed to the fire together. This branch was carried still farther; for after creating wax images of the person to be operated upon, whatever was done to the image the prototype was supposed to feel. This whim of the waxen images is remarkable as being the only one of their love enchantments which appears to have survived the dark ages, as we find the same idea prevalent during the monkish times; and if we recollect rightly, the Ettrick Shepherd has embodied it in a poetical form in one of his early publications. Enchanted medicaments were deemed of particular efficacy, and sprinkled on some part of the house where the object of affection resided. When the intimacy of the lovers had proceeded so far as the exchange of love pledges, they were preserved with the greatest care, and sometimes were deposited at the threshold of their house, to preserve the affections of the owner from wandering. Love-knots were as efficacious as any, and the number three was deemed particularly favourable in all their operations.

The ancients had no very high opinion themselves of that sort of love which their enchantments were supposed to procure; for they imagined that the flame so lighted might be as easily quenched, by having recourse to more powerful enchantments, as a demon of a higher order, than were deemed instrumental in exciting it, while they admitted that love inspired without magic was without cure. When a passion was supposed to have been inspired by magic, to counteract its effect they had recourse to agnus castus, which was believed to have the power of weakening desire; sprinkling the dust in which a mule had rolled herself; tying toads in the hide of a beast newly slain; applying amulets of various minerals and herbs; and invoking the assistance of the infernal deities. The most classical remedy, however, for a hopeless passion, and also the most efficacious, we should think, was the leap down the Leucadian promontory. This experiment has been immortalized by the example of the amorous Sappho. Boats were always in readiness to pick up the adventurers, but still the instances of those whose attempts had a tragical issue, are quite as numerous as those who escaped with merely a ducking, though it is by no means likely that young Cupid would again choose for his abode, a heart which had undergone such a wonderfully cooling anti-amorous operation, as the "Leucadian Leap,"

Varieties.

WOODEN MARBLES.-This new disco very consists in imitating, by means of a peculiar kind of wooden paste, without any incrustation, the most precious and rarest marbles, and even creating, according to the dictates of fancy or imagina tion, marbles of any taste, fashion, or fancy, more beautiful than those provided by nature. These marbles, of whatever imitation or creation, being of infinite durability, bear washing and cleaning with a sponge; are susceptible of being planed as easily as common wood, and renewed; and notwithstanding this, the underpart remains the same without the slightest alteration taking place in the finish of the workmanship. These marbles produce at more or less depth, at little expense, perfectly, what painting would produce merely on the surface, at a great expense, and even in an imperfect manner. This invention is useful for decorating, with the most beautiful and rarest marbles, the interior of palaces, churches, and houses, besides being adapted for the purposes of stairs, doors, chimney-pieces, stoves, staircases, pannels of apartments, pianos, columns, secretaries, &c; and also for ornamenting with marble all furniture, or any other objects whatever which require it.

DOCTOR SOUTH.-When Doctor South resided at Caversham in Oxfordshire, one very cold winter's morning he was called out of his bed to marry a couple who were then waiting at the church. He hurried on his habiliments, and went shivering to the church: but seeing only an old man of seventy, and a woman about the same age, he asked his clerk, in a pet, where the bride and bridegroom were, and what these old people wanted? The old man replied that they came there to be married. The doctor looked sternly at them, and exclaimed-“Married!" "Yes, married," said the old man hastily; "better marry than do worse." "Get you gone, you silly old fools," said the doctor, "get home and do your worst," and hobbled out of the church, abusing his clerk for disturbing him on so silly an occasion.

It has long been a desideratum in this country to procure pure zinc, in order to enable us to make brass equal in goodness to that manufactured in Germany. A native of Saxony has procured a patent, in connection with a London house, for extracting zinc from its ore, and they have taken works in Wales for the purpose: if they succeed, the English brass will be equal to any in the world.